Sudan’s ongoing conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces, increasingly viewed as a proxy war driven by competing geopolitical interests, has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

It also highlights a hybrid form of war reporting of what some, lamenting the dearth of international media coverage, see as a ‘silent conflict’. This reporting is being framed as a pragmatic, perhaps controversial, response to what researchers have called traditional media’s persistent ‘neglect’ of the fighting.

Lead author of the 2025 paper Maha Bashri says female activists in Sudan – which she and her colleagues call 'j’activists' – are stepping into the void left by Sudanese and international media, assuming the role of journalists. While this enables the war to be documented and people’s ‘lived experiences’ to be amplified on social media, it does not replace journalists’ role in holding power to account and conducting investigations, the authors say.

J’activists’ presence doubtless adds another layer to Sudan’s complex information ecosystem, where both sides use information warfare. This propaganda includes military media campaigns, influencers, coordinated hashtag campaigns, bot-like amplification and inauthentic amplification by actors in the diaspora.

The collapse of independent media in Sudan is well documented, with the Sudan Media Forum reporting in 2025 that the country was experiencing ‘a near-total media blackout,’ with many radio, television stations and print media forced to close. Local radio stations also closed due to funding cuts by USAID and other donors.

Bashri spoke to ISS Today at a Cape Town workshop on conflict reporting. Her team had interviewed 10 female journalists and activists in Sudan. ‘[Two] of the journalists we spoke to were really upset about the idea [of activist journalists] and said they were doing more harm than good – not informing the people and not informing the outside world.’

The activists they interviewed, though, ‘do not declare themselves as journalists or activists’ – but are just doing journalists’ work. ‘They stayed behind [in Sudan], and that is the common denominator for all of them; they never left because they could not afford to.’

Much of their ‘reportage’, which ends up on social media platforms, is descriptive and observational. ‘People would ask them, can you go check my house, or do you know if this area has been bombed, and it was like a chronicle, a daily chronicle of what they were going through.’

Bashri believes that while there are impartiality and access challenges, these so-called j’activists, with pre-existing social media followings, play an important role in capturing and amplifying material in the absence of professional media. In future, she argues, what these women record could become vital archive material.

The study claims that ‘structural inequalities in global media systems are giving rise to innovative forms of conflict reporting’ and global media should take a more ‘nuanced’ approach to reporting conflicts in Africa. The authors say ‘geopolitical biases and economic interests’ in big international media houses shape global coverage (or lack thereof) of African conflicts.

That may be true regarding how stories are selected and framed, but global media faces a financing crisis. Many international news organisations have slashed their budgets, especially for foreign news coverage, opening the prospect of entire parts of the world going unreported.

The blurring of lines between activism and journalism is not unique to Sudan, nor to Africa. It raises other important issues – particularly of protection, argues University of Liverpool Communication and Media Department academic Dr Richard Stupart.

Journalists are protected under international humanitarian law and are considered civilians as long as they don’t participate in hostilities. Yet at a time when they are increasingly being considered ‘fair game’ by some militaries, there are ambiguities. Gaza is a case in point. The Committee to Protect Journalists is currently embroiled in a dispute with Israel over how it defines a journalist as it seeks to monitor casualties.

On Sudan’s j’activists, Stupart says: ‘We are getting the imperfect reporting but with people who are there. If we think that is important to preserve and archive, then we should surely protect them? The other option is to send back professionals.’

Another challenge in a burgeoning global influence and content-creation economy is determining the incentives for those who create online content. Reuters Institute reports that audiences like story delivery from less traditional ‘journalists’, but don’t necessarily consider it objective reporting.

Financial rewards for high online engagement mean those with pre-existing followings can act as ‘buzzers’ or amplifiers of narratives for external actors. That is not to suggest that Sudan’s j’activists are not delivering powerful, important content. But when checks and balances that protect the integrity of content and those who deliver it are absent, trust and credibility may be questioned.

Another tactic observed in Africa is the creation of imposter accounts, whereby actors pretend to be legitimate journalists and use that credibility to spread narratives. Examples include creating ‘fake’ investigative journalists and fraudulent copies of genuine online newspapers, as documented in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda.

J’activists may be driven by a desire to document the war and fill an important gap. But a lack of oversight and professional journalistic norms, including double sourcing, means they and their followers may be open to abuse. The need for professional journalists is more pressing than ever, given the dire human toll. Claims of abuses by either side need to be verified, especially given the increasing presence of deepfakes.

While j’activists’ ‘proximity to the conflict and understanding of local contexts can enable more nuanced reporting’ as Bashri and her colleagues argue, the challenge is how to integrate this into traditional reporting.

They recommend that journalism education should evolve to include hybrid reporting and that practitioners are trained in ethics and innovation. More flexible funding options for international media could ensure that local voices are not simply sources, but also storytellers.

Written by Karen Allen, ISS Consultant and former BBC foreign correspondent